Can you build tiny retail store with apartment?

I really wish we could just have our sims officially live on their retail lots. All of my shop owners spend so much time at their retail stores, there's no point owning a house too. It ends up being a waste of a perfectly good lot that another family might like to own.

Or else, I wish they'd given us real apartment tools. In TS2, I used to build little 3x3 "apartments" for my business owners, or for sims that I wanted to permanently live in their vacation homes. It was like having a PO Box, so it wouldn't waste a whole lot somewhere. But they didn't give us real apartments in TS4. :(